


The End and The Beginning bookended - Review of Dollhouse episodes Epitaph 1 and Unaired Pilot Echo

by shadowkat67



Series: Dollhouse Episode Reviews [9]
Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Review, Episode: s01e13 Epitaph One, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-01
Updated: 2009-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22406086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Series: Dollhouse Episode Reviews [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612507





	The End and The Beginning bookended - Review of Dollhouse episodes Epitaph 1 and Unaired Pilot Echo

So, finally saw the fan favorite "Epitaph One" and the unaired pilot "Echo" from the Dollhouse S1, Disc 4 DVD 

Saw _Epitaph One_ first, so will review it first. It was written by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon and Jed's wife or rather the story was written by Joss, and the teleplay by Jed and his wife. It was directed by David Solomon.

Was not quite what I expected. I can see why it got mixed reviews on livejournal, the episode's narrative flow is not really linear in nature, and it jumps around a lot. Also we have the fill-in for the viewer or outside narrator device - which does not always work well but Joss Whedon and science fiction writers in general appear to be enamored of for some reason. Whedon has used it before in episodes ranging from _The Zeppo_ to _Storyteller_. I personally find it annoying and jarring, but a lot of people adore it. The device basically involves a guest star, a recurring character or minor character telling the audience what the world is like, we jump into their point of view and see all the lead or stars of the series through their eyes. Medical shows do this all the time - the sick patient tactic - where we, the audience are inside the sick patient, we see what they see and experience the characters through their eyes. Not sure who did this first - but I do remember seeing it done in old black and white 1950s _Gunsmoke_ reruns and _MASH_. The other device - which is the one used in "Epitaph One" is skipping ahead to the future, and the outside character coming upon the remains of the show or the characters, and trying to figure out what happened to them. (Which is a common thread in many dark science-fiction and fantasy dramas. Lots of them end in this manner, although I'm regrettably drawing a blank on specific examples.)

In **Epitaph One** \- the outside character is "Mac" - a woman that up until now has not been introduced. The story has leaped ahead of the setting that we have become familar with, we find ourselves ten years in the future, it is 2019, and Mac is leading a team of refugees through the burned out remains of Los Angelos. The writer does not give us much exposition, instead we have to work to figure it out. It is there, but told in snippets, and the mystery of the episode or central puzzle is what happened here, what happened to the Dollhouse, and where did the characters go? Mac and her comrades must figure this out in order to escape the burned out shell of LA and the sorry fate of becoming mindless zombies open to whomever or whatever decides to take over their minds, otherwise known as "imprints". It's a landscape right out of a Terminator flick or Resident Evil, and in some respects reminiscent of such sci-fi classics as Richard Mathieson's I Am Legend and Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Racing away from those who wish to imprint them - they go deep underground and happen upon the seemingly abandoned Dollhouse. But they don't know it is the Dollhouse. And like every other character I've ever seen enter an abandoned structure in a horror flick - they proceed to do really stupid things. (Seriously, if I happened upon an abandoned structure deep underground, while fleeing for my life, and armed with weapons, I'd do a perimeter search, make damn sure there were no hostiles lying in wait, then proceed to make myself comfortable. But in horror movies people always do the exact opposite. It is mind-boggling.) As a result, one of them, an actress who looks a lot like Iyri Limon who played Kennedy, but isn't, called Lid(??) or Liv(?) decides to take a shower - informing her charge, an 8 year old girl, Iris, to go find the bathrooms by herself. (Sweetie, just pee anywhere - it's an abandoned building, you've almost been killed more times than you can count, who bloody cares where the bathrooms are. Or who sees you. Just pee in the shower. I would.) Liv, who for reasons I don't understand, decides to drop her gun, her clothes, and take a hot show at this public and sort of open spa like shower stall in the middle of the compound...up until now she's paranoid, pointing her gun every direction, not trusting anyone. But hey, she hasn't taken a shower in a year and there's hot water...so what the hell, throws all caution to the wind. Of course she gets killed. (I'm sure there's a deeper meaning in there somewhere, but I'm not seeing it.) And the little girl comes back and screams.

Meanwhile the others have located Topher's imprinting chair - and have decided to us the brain-dead Mr. Miller, Iris' alleged father, to download memories. They place him in the chair and program in the memories. (Not sure how they figured out how to do it - apparently the machine isn't as hard to program as Topher lead us to believe.) And this is when the episode starts to get interesting.

Dollhouse is at its best when it is focusing on the characters Adelle, Topher, Boyd, Saunders, Victor, and Prya/Sierra. And that's what happens here. We start getting memory flashbacks. The first is clearly the memory of either a male client or Adelle herself - entertaining the client, coaxing him to use the Dollhouse. In the memory, which is taken from the end of the unaired pilot "Echo" - Adelle informs the client that an active or doll is not the same as a prostitute - she/he will be in love with you, there is no pretending. They will feel for you, they will be programmed to believe that they had a wonderful romance and want you desperately. We flash back to Mac and her pals, who comment, oh so imprinting started out as just a high-priced escort service or brothel?? At this point, Iris returns, without Liv who has been killed. Iris (the little girl) is given a tatto that says "I am Iris Miller", first and last name. We are told this is how they know who they are, who the actual person is, in case they get imprinted with someone else and are lost. This is how they keep their identity.

The whole idea of loss of identity or mind is a constant theme in both the episode and the series. Whedon as he does in all his other works - is addressing the cost of immortality and the meaningless of it. He is also addressing the idea of identity - how the identity of an artist can easily be lost inside the corporate machine or the identity of human being lost inside the group or hive. It is by no means a new theme. The idea of technology replacing us or overtaking and controlling who we are...we reach the point in which playing god is akin to a child playing with matchs. We burn all that we and others have built to the ground.

Dollhouse in its totality strikes me as a psychological horror tale, old school Rod Sterling or Outer Limits, with a bit of Patrick McGooghan's Prisoner thrown into the mix. Whedon has essentially taken the zombie concept and given it a modern twist. In Epitaph, much like Night of the Living Dead or rather, the more modern Resident Evil crossmarketed to video gamers and film goers alike, the humans are fighting a losing battle against a menace that threatens to extend their lifespan by erasing their identity. True Death, mind plus body, can only be achieved through the imprint machine in which they find Caroline and safe haven, a means to block the imprinting and die with their minds intact - not preserved in a disc on a shelf in an underground bunker, with their bodies wiped clean, free of the memories. Memory we are told in Epitaph is everything, without it - we are wandering much as Mac and her friends in the dark.

And the memories of the Dollhouse are fed to us like jagged jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each not quite fitting the other. Topher's first day at the Dollhouse, where he meets Adelle and her top of security. His wonder. And his statement in the unaired pilot Echo to Manfriend Boyd Langton - "morality is a construct, something we ourselves create". Boyd tells Topher that he is not his manfriend, and Topher responds, how so? Are we not friends? Boyd states, "no, we are not men". "Men" being the operative term, as opposed to mere constructs, toys, puppets at someone else's whim. Men require justifications and rationals, toys do not.

In the next puzzle piece we begin to see how both Topher and Adelle are caught within their own web of justifications, Adelle's that this is science, advancement, the good of the species, and Topher's it is just a game, a means of evolving...we are expanding our knowledge...children with matches - they see the blaze begin to get out of their control when the Rossum Corporation informs them of its latest venture - via the use of Victor. Threatening them that if they do not allow it to keep Victor along with his enhancements, they will find themselves more than compromised.

Adelle and Topher are themselves, dolls. Puppets. Their strings being pulled by the larger corporate structure. It is a theme that Whedon first addressed in Buffy with the Initiative and the clueless but aggressive Watcher Council, and later with Wolf Ram and Hart - the orderly corporate law firm from hell, and then with Firefly - the rag-tag band of smugglers fleeing unification. The corporate structure that erases aggression and turns us all into mindless zombies, playing video games well into the night.

The next visual is Claire Saunders/Whiskey helping Boyd Langton escape, while Topher hides in one of the doll's sleeping chambers, rummaging through his books and papers, talking to a world-weary and distraught Adelle. He asks if it is better to pick up the phone or not to. To become part of the mindless hoard compromised by the signal distributed by phone or to stay isolated, emersed in guilt for being the one who came up with the idea to begin with. Who could come up with a way to turn people into their own private army? Who would think that up? Wait, was it me? Did I do this? Did I? And listening to Topher, one can't help but envision Oppheimer when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagaski and Hiroshima, or for that matter, the scientists who designed the death camps. Wracked with guilt, the amoral Topher appears to have constructed his own conscience.

Prya/Sierra and Victor meanwhile haggle over defenses. Prya stuck with her memories, wishes she was without them, uncomfortable in her skin, and yearning for contact with Victor, who pushes her away...that's right she mutters, we don't do that anymore. We aren't quite told why.

And finally before we're flipped to the dark and dreary future, we see Echo and Ballard pop in and save the gang, huddled deep inside the Dollhouse fortress. Letting them out and leading the way to safe haven or rather the place that Alpha resides for Alpha has found a way to block the imprints, to maintain their real selves. Saunders asks if Echo is with Ballard now. If they are "together". The jury is still out on that one or I would hardly call it that, Caroline replies.

Before she leaves, she confronts Adelle...one last scene between two adversaries. "Will you leave me here then? Abandon me to my fate? Or are you planning to kill me, Caroline?"  
And Caroline lifts the gun aiming it in Adelle's face - we aren't told ...what happens next, for the screen flips back to the present or future, and Whiskey/Dr. Saunders stars at Mac, a shattered husk in her long flowing white evening dress.

The sociopath discovering morality is hardly new either - Whedon first played with the idea of moral constructs in the children's story Toy Story - where the old time lovable and somewhat morally bankrupt Woody learns the hard way to accept the big heroic doofus Buz Lightyear, the first Spike and Angel tale, later we see it erupting in the Angel and Buffy series...with souls or the lack thereof, and still later in Firefly with the ethical quandry of smuggling and the mercernary Jayne, as well as the not so clean beneath the collar Mal Reynolds. Adelle and Topher discover their morality almost too late ...and are described by Caroline in the final reel of Epitaph in response to Mac's question, what happened here...why did they do this? They were like children, Caroline states, now a child again herself, trapped inside the body of prepubscent Iris, playing with matches.

Iris - the girl child, both devil and savior, another common thread within the matrix of Whedon's stories. Buffy - the girl, the slayer, a mere 16, slaying her monsters. River - the 15 year old warrior, tortured and trained to be a ninja, a human weapon. And now Iris, first the nemesis, killing off Mac's team one by one, in order to survive, then the savior, imprinted to be Caroline, taking them, complete with snarky comebacks to safe haven. Whedon for some reason has avatars that are adolescent girls, given power beyond their years.

We aren't told if they make it to safe haven - which as Caroline snarks isn't really one at all - "is that what they are calling it now?" she asks as she strokes the pictures of herself and her friends on the wall. "I better have made it. I hope I made it."

We also aren't really told what happened here - given pieces of memory to tell the tale, a warning of sorts...about what happens when we play with matches. Each memory fitting haphazardly in the mix. We know Adelle tried to stop it - by bringing out her ex-henchman, the traitorous spy and second in command, but failed. And we know she and Topher somehow provided the Rossum Corporation with the signal that provides them the means to wipe everyone's memories and imprint them with new memories with little more than a phone call. Rossum might as well be the Umbrella Corp of _Resident Evil_ , in the film version of the popular video game, a zombifying virus is unleashed turning all who die within its path, zombies....or Wolf Ram and Hart, the law firm with its faceless and unknowable partners plotting and weaving their endless and orderly schemes or the UnitedCorp of Firefly...the evil corporation with the best interests of humanity, that has now almost become a cliche. A faceless entity...that stands in silent power over all who worship power and money and advancement. The Ayn Randian horror of the individual conscripted by the group mentality, merged in turn with the Jack Finney horror of having your body snatched and turned into something else. All this feels vaguely familar to me, as if I've seen it countless times before. Something out of George Orwell or Huxley's Brave New World.

Then there is the first episode, the unaired pilot, **Echo** , written and directed by Joss Whedon...which up until now had only been seen in script form or teaser snippets on the internet. Told much as Epitaph One is told in jagged bits of narrative, flashes of memory. The central story, the linear one is one that is told through an outsiders eyes, someone who resides outside the Dollhouse but knows it exists and seeks to uncover it. An FBI agent named Ballard who stumbles upon a woman named Shannon Vickers who bears an uncommon resemblance to a missing girl whose picture is sent to him in a mysterious envelope. Much like Epitaph One, Echo raises more questions than answers. Snippets of Echo find itself intermingled in Epitaph One. We see Adelle work her manipulations and Topher rationalize his...he is on to Echo's odd behavior inside the Dollhouse and alerts only Dr. Saunders and Boyd Langton, both of whom have their own reasons to protect Echo neither of which is as self-serving as Topher's. Topher - who tells Boyd in this episode that morality is little more than a construct, that he feels little more than a scientist's curiousity for the dolls.

No fun zombie horror flick - we don't have gross ghouls and decaying corpses moaning in rhythmatic pentameter..ooom...ohmmm. Instead, we have people mind-wiped, turned into the fantasy object of the highest bidder. Saunders goes for the pro-bono approach - a means of justifying what they do. If we mind-wipe them for the greater good, she rationalizes, it's not so bad. Topher complains that doing such a thing, leaving them in that state for too long a time, causes a malfunction...the reality of who they once were could bleed in. And Adelle argues that they aren't whores, they don't pretend. The experience is real for them, then erased, and no one is hurt in the end. Making us wonder who are the real monsters in the mix.

It is unsettling to watch...as most good horror is...horror's purpose is to show us the worste case scenario. We get an almost cathartic thrill from seeing it played out on a screen, then resolved...in a satsifying manner, we hope. If they can resolve that, than so can we. No worries. Horror tales relieve our anxious and unspoken fears - fears of being raped, wiped, dying horribly from disease, murdered, tortured, kidnapped, or simply failing in a major way. Horror tales also shine a light on human weakness and the dark side of the human soul - showing us the consequences of those fantasies and desires we dare not utter for fear of being smacked. The Horror writer is the gutsy narrator of our own darkest desires, our own fears, and pangs, and those things we think that make us very happy no one is blessed with the gift of ESP.

As psychological horror tales, **Epitaph One** and **Echo** both succeed. Complete with common slasher horror twists and turns...the heroine taking a shower in the abandoned bunker, or the hero trusting someone who appears far weaker than they are. In horror, good psychological horror, there are no good guys and bad guys, so much as people complete with flaws and quirks, making mistakes that make the audience gasp and wince in horror.

The themes are clear here, even if the lead two characters, Ballard and Echo, feel a bit murky and lost within the jagged narrative and haphazard plotting. Whedon proves himself to be an adept narrator of psychological horror, capable of constructing emotional arcs that twist a character revealing hidden bits and pieces - such as Topher, who is originally shown as amoral, and latter wracked with guilt. But his plot winds and wanders, and almost, not quite peeters out, the characters...with the exception of Topher and Adelle, feel like they've been wedged into the puzzle of the plot at odd angles. Echo/Caroline fails to compel, marginalized as a one-note heroine, who changes little from scene to scene, and Ballard too, the straight-up hero, the tongue in cheek white knight to her damsel that will not be rescued. They are the black hole at the center...of a web of characters that make sense and compel to different degrees around them. But perhaps that is the point...to put these two tried and true stock characters in the center?

At any rate, on the whole, I find that I am rather fond of these two episodes, more so than the rest of season one. During Echo, I wondered why the network chose to air the other five pilot episodes instead - this episode was so much more gripping and so much less repugnant. Making me contemplate whether Fox may well be the one guilty of sexism here? Or rather Fox's marketing team.

Perhaps the reason I like these episodes is the very reason that Fox chose not to air them and others online did not like them - the puzzle aspect, the jig-saw effect, figuring out the plot, and not being given many answers. Fox may well think its audience prefers the more linear tale, one told simply and directly, without having to think too much on the particulars, and no need to fill in the gaps. I admit to an odd fascination with tv shows and stories that have gaps, that leave more to the imagination rather than less. _The Haunting_ \- the original Robert Wise film - scared me far more than the gruesome _Amityville Horror_ or the Speilberg remake. And I love the Magna cartoon - _Kimba_ as a child, which upon re-watching, I realized how vague the story was, and how much it left to my imagination. If I have to figure it out, if I am not told everything - I am far more fascinated with it. And Joss Whedon prefers to leave gaps in his stories...to leave things open to the imagination, much as James Cameron did in the classic horror tale _Terminator_ \- where we are told little about this nightmare future world...except the basics. The rest we fill in ourselves. The audience is allowed to think.

I don't recommend the extras. Rather boring. And a bit too self-congratulatory for my taste. But the two episodes themselves, the meat of the DVD, are well worth the price and time it takes to watch.


End file.
